Mrs Swann
by SS Dispatch
Summary: A quick one shot about the mother of Elizabeth Swann, explaining how she lived and how she died and the impact she had on her daughter. Slightly AU.


"Mummy! Mummy look what I found!" Elizabeth shouted out to her mother, Charlotte, who sat on a heavily cushioned chair on the back porch of their mansion. Elizabeth practically pranced through the long grass and flowers of the meadow just behind their home, carrying a glass bottle the size of her small head in her arms.

"What is it?" Her mother asked curiously as her very dirty daughter sprang up on the seat beside her.

"A treasure!" She exclaimed happily, fiddling with the cork on the bottle. The green bottle that had once contained ale, now simply contained a bit of rolled up parchment. Elizabeth's mother glanced at the mud dripping off her daughter's shoes. Charlotte knew well that her husband would surely admonish the child if he saw how much dirt she was getting all over their clean furniture. But instead of scolding her herself, she smiled and took the bottle delicately from the girl's fingers.

"Let's see here. What have you found, Elizabeth?" She was just as curious as her daughter to see what was in the bottle. She managed to dig her long nails into the cork and yank it out.

Out slipped the parchment, rolled up so tightly that it was hardly wider than Charlotte's index finger. Elizabeth's small hand grabbed the parchment before her mother could open it. She unraveled the paper and held a hand beside it as a makeshift wall to block her mother's eyes from peering at the page. But Elizabeth's mother was quite taller than her daughter and was able to look down over her shoulder at the paper. It was unmistakably a letter.

"Can you read it?" Charlotte asked softly.

Elizabeth immediately blushed and shook her head, shoving the parchment back into her mother's lap, "You know I can't read, mummy, I've given it up!"

But her mother had expected this and merely smiled. "Come on, sweetheart, try with me," She suggested, holding it out so they could both read from it.

"'My dearest Calypso,'" Her mother said slowly. Elizabeth sat up a bit, mumbling the words under her breath. "'A mere year has passed and already I feel the agonizing pain of life without you.'" Her mother paused, but not because her daughter was reading along with her, but because the letter seemed too heavy. As her eyes glanced over the rest of the words she realized this material might have been unsuitable for such a young girl. A child of only five ought not to be learning about the pains of love just yet, Charlotte reasoned. Elizabeth surely understood the love her mother had for her, but it would be many years before she could understand this sort of devotion.

"I think that's enough for today," She folded the parchment in fourths and pulled it out of Elizabeth's reach when she lunged for it.

"But mummy! You said you wanted me to read it! What does it say mummy? What does 'agronizing' mean?"

Her mother shook her head and gently nudged Elizabeth's prying hand away, "Not today, Elizabeth. Maybe someday, when you're older." She said, "This is a little bit too advanced of reading for you, I'm afraid."

Elizabeth pouted furiously, her arms crossed tightly across her chest, "But you read Hamlet to me yesterday, and daddy said it was much too bad for Elizabeth to read."

Charlotte stood up, "No, that's quite enough. You're to be going upstairs and cleaning off now. Your father will be in a right state if he sees how dirty you've gotten from playing."

With a childlike roar, Elizabeth stormed inside, tracking the mud behind her. The servant girls would not be pleased to have to clean it up later.

Charlotte leaned against the banister of the porch. She looked out at the sea and sighed softly. The parchment was still in her hand and moved slightly with the sea air. Her hair fell in front of her face as the wind caught hold of a spare tendril. Once one bit came out there was no point in keeping the rest up; she pulled the pins out of her hair and let them scatter to the floor. The deep brown layers of her hair came free, only to be immediately tangled in the wind. She hated having to wear it up like this all day. Even in the relative peace of her home she was supposed to always look presentable. She never knew when her husband would bring home the governor of St. Kitts or Barbados, or god knew who else.

This had not been the life she had planned. Weatherby had been a nobody when she met him, but when they were engaged he had pursued politics and right after their wedding day he was elected Governor of Port Royale. At the time she'd been elated. The wealth! And oh how she'd been thrilled to be doted in the finest fashions, but eventually the happiness of the wealth wore off. When it did, she looked up to realize her husband had aspired to a career that left him no time to be with her or their daughter. She became nothing more than a housewife.

The shock didn't fully hit her until the day that Elizabeth had been struck with influenza. Despite the risk of her catching it as well, Charlotte had not left her daughter's side through the illness, desperately afraid she would lose her one and only child. During the long week and half of her daughter fighting off the illness, Weatherby had not once been seen in the house. When Elizabeth had been struck ill he had been visiting a township on the island just over the way, and Charlotte wasn't concerned until three or four days had passed and there was still no sight of him. She had sent out a messenger on the fastest ship they had, and the messenger returned before Weatherby did. Charlotte had shaken the messenger herself, demanding to know where her husband was, but the poor messenger could only inform her that he had told Weatherby of their daughter's illness and that he had no idea why the governor had not returned home yet.

So for a week and a half Charlotte and Elizabeth's nurse, Jane, tended to her with immense care. They rotated between waking and sleeping so that somebody was always watching her in case something bad were to happen. Finally, Elizabeth gained enough strength to sit up in her crib and play with her toys. Her temperature had finally gone down and her disposition had brightened again. Both Charlotte and Jane knew it was a miracle. Most women had to bury their young children because of influenza. But Elizabeth had survived, and Charlotte could not have been happier. That was, until Weatherby returned a day or two later in a carriage packed with trunks that were filled with all sorts of luxuries for his wife. He had arrived with the pathetic excuse of being caught up in a trade dispute that could not have been put off. Charlotte's outrage could not be left unsaid, and after an hour of shouting Weatherby had practically been in tears and deeply apologized for his actions, promising to never disregard them again.

Charlotte ran her hand through her hair absentmindedly, trying to coax the terrible memories out of her head. But no matter what she did, there was a nagging thought that would not go away. Her husband still was hardly ever home. It'd been three days since they last saw him, as he was across the island spending time with his sailor friends. She could not understand just why he had to spend three solid days with people he saw and employed all of the time.

Suddenly, she heard the loud whinny of horses coming from the front of their estate. The breeze stirred her stronger than it had before, whisking the letter straight out of her hand. She had gasped in surprise and for a second longed to run after it, curious to read the rest of it. But she knew it was hopeless as she watched it hover and float briefly before falling back into the sea.

"Daddy!" Elizabeth shouted from the top of the banister of the entrance hall, her voice carrying through the open windows on the porch.

"Elizabeth, darling! Why what on earth do you think you're doing running around like this?" He asked with a mixture of amusement and irritation.

Charlotte walked through the back door into their home once more, knowing that her husband would be wondering where she was.

"Jane - yes, thank you. No it's quite alright," Weatherby was saying to the nurse maid who had scooped the filthy and naked Elizabeth up, carrying her back upstairs where she had apparently escaped from her bath time.

Weatherby looked down to see his wife appear before him. He raised a brow at her wild and untamed hair, "Charlotte, dear, what has happened? Your hair looks as if it is trying to hang you, and Elizabeth is running about with a dirt demon!" He laughed softly, leaving a small kiss on her cheek. But despite his soft gestures and loving tone her blue eyes still looked relatively distant. "Charlotte, what's the matter?" His tone lowered with concern. "Has something happened? Charlotte speak to me. Why have you been like this lately?" His concern was underlined with irritation. They had been squabbling as of late, and she was well aware that it infuriated him greatly when she got upset like this.

"You promised me. You promised me that you would not let me down again." Charlotte said vindictively as their daughter wailed from upstairs in the bath. But the noise did not cause Charlotte to falter. "We nearly lost her, and you swore to me that you would never again put your work ahead of us. But as each and every day comes and goes I see no evidence that you have changed, Weatherby. You love your work more than you love us, no matter how you seem to act. Three days you've been gone, and the worst of it is that it does not even alarm me anymore."

He looked positively nettled, "Charlotte, not this again."

"No, you are not going to try to silence me again," She insisted, her blood flowing stronger in her veins now, "The wind and the sea have reminded me of who I once loved. Weatherby Swann was the man I fell in love with, not the governor of Port Royale." Vague images of their courtship fluttered into her mind. The day they had fallen asleep on the beach after hours and hours of conversation. The look on his face when she had told him she loved him. She had once known just what it was like to feel the pain of love, but she could not help but think that a new pain had replaced it.

"I am just the same as when you married me, Charlotte, and if you honestly think that I am so different, then surely we were married under false pretenses because this is who I am," He said boldly, puffing his chest out.

They stared each other down. His darker eyes lit with fear and her eyes, blue like the sea, were boiling with fury and outrage.

"Jane!" She shouted so loudly and suddenly that he flinched in surprise.

The door to the bathroom could be heard clanging open upstairs, and the nurse's voice echoed through the house, "Yes, ma'am?" The young girl's voice trembled slightly in fear.

"Bring me my daughter please," Charlotte said, trying to calm her tone down a bit so as not to scare the nurse.

"What do you think you're doing?" Weatherby said under his breath, shaking his head slowly as if he already knew the answer to the question. Elizabeth came scuttling down the stairs in her long nightgown, "Mummy? Mummy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get dirt everywhere, please don't be mad." She buried herself in the skirts of her mother's dress.

Charlotte looked down and ran her hand over her child's wet hair, "It's alright, Elizabeth. There's no need to be afraid, mummy's not mad at you."

"Charlotte, don't," Weatherby sounded as if there were a rock lodged in his throat.

"I will not let my daughter grow up with a father who exists as a mere shadow in her life. I am done hoping that one day you will come to your senses. I am done waiting for you." Her words hit him like cannon balls, despite her soft tone. "Goodbye, Weatherby Swann," She said resolutely, gently taking her child's hand and storming out of the mansion.

The carriage that he had ridden up in moments before still waited at the gate. The driver looked at the two women curiously. The eldest in an exquisite dress but with untamable hair and the child only in a white night robe. "Don't ask any questions, just take me to my mother's please," She begged him as she helped little Elizabeth into the carriage. She climbed in after her as the black horses set off across the island. Elizabeth crawled into her mother's lap, as she was oft to do when she was scared.

"What's going to happen?" She whispered softly against her mother's chest, hiding her face there and pretending not to cry.

Charlotte gently held her child in her arms, the carriage rocking them slightly now and again, "I'm not sure, dear. But I rather doubt you will see much of daddy again." She wished that her child might not understand what was happening, but she knew that despite her difficulties with reading, Elizabeth was a very bright child.

"But I didn't even get to say goodbye!" Her daughter wailed in sorrow, giving up any pretenses of not being upset.

"Sometimes we don't get to say goodbye to the ones we love, Elizabeth. That's just how the world works," Her mother mumbled, feeling a sudden sense of irony. She had thought her daughter was unprepared to understand love, but it would seem that her daughter was being thrust into understanding what hardship was long before she knew of love.

For several long moments Charlotte was able to shut her eyes and just listen to the sad sound of her daughter crying in her arms and the galloping of the horses' hooves. Then, suddenly, Elizabeth stopped crying and was quiet for a moment. Her mother briefly hoped that her daughter was finally calming down, but she was mistaken, "Why would you make us leave mummy? Maybe I wanted to stay with daddy!" She shouted angrily.

"You'll be better taken care of with me, Elizabeth, trust me," Charlotte said without hesitation. She couldn't explain it to her, it would only upset her more.

Elizabeth pulled away from her mother, hitting her shoulder quite hard before moving to the other side of the carriage in a flurry as she shouted, "I hate you! I hate you! I want daddy back!"

Charlotte thought she would know better than to take a child's tantrum seriously, but she could not deny the sense of pain she felt in her chest at her daughter's abrupt fury. Her eyes watered slightly but her voice did not quiver at all, "Elizabeth Swann! You do not strike your - !" But she didn't get to finish her rebuke as several things happened at once. The horses brayed in terror and the driver shouted as the carriage jostled heavily and began to tumble off the road and down a small hill onto a field.

Wood flew every which way as the carriage began to break into pieces, and the screams of the mother and daughter were heard by the nearby blacksmith who had been walking along the road, heading back into town. He had seen the driver roll off the carriage in the nick of time, but laid unconscious on the side of the road from the fall. The horses had detached from their restraints and were dashing away. The blacksmith decided that the driver looked well enough to leave be and headed toward the carriage. It had broken apart in several pieces, and was completely upside down. "Is anybody in here?" He called out, glancing inside through the half broken off door, but barely able to see through the wood shavings and dust floating through the air in a cloud.

He heard no response and tore off the last half of the door, reaching into the carriage blindly and grabbed something small and skinny that was undeniably the limb of a human. He tugged out a small, unconscious girl from the wreckage. Her body was covered in small scratches from the wood, but she appeared to be fine given her steady breathing. The blacksmith reached in again and pulled out the only other thing that his hands could grab onto, a considerably larger human, a young woman of maybe twenty five. It was only when he laid her upon the grass that he realized it was the Governor's wife.

He felt no pulse in her wrist and no breath escaping her lungs. There was a bright bruise formed on her upper forehead and blood soaking her hair. She was most certainly dead. The blacksmith shook his head in disbelief. Of course he hadn't personally known her, but he had never stared straight at death before. He gently nudged her eyelids back down over her empty blue eyes and let her body rest in the grass. The blacksmith then turned and gently picked the unconscious child up in his arms, walking all the way back to the governor's mansion to bear the unfortunate news.

* * *

Elizabeth awoke in her large bed in her bedroom at home. She furrowed her brow in confusion. Her last memory had been covering her head as she slammed into the side of the carriage and her mother's terrible screams. Jane had noticed that she had opened her eyes at last and rushed over to the girl's side, quickly followed by her father who had been pacing around the other side of the room.

"Elizabeth, are you alright?" He asked anxiously.

Elizabeth had never heard him sound so petrified. She nodded slightly. Her body ached a lot and she could feel bandages wrapped around her head and arms but she did not feel terrible. "Daddy," She murmured, looking over at him, "W-where's mummy?" Her breath was already hitching in her throat, as if she knew the answer. The nurse's look of anguish and empathy was a dead giveaway.

"Y-your mother… she's dead," He said painfully as Jane stood and left the room to give them privacy.

"But she can't be," The little girl said, holding back her tears. "I didn't get to say goodbye." A single tear slipped past and fell onto her cheek.

Her father uncharacteristically sat on her bed, pulling his daughter into his arms, blankets and all. "I'm so sorry, Elizabeth. This is all my fault," He said darkly, his voice sounding weak. "Elizabeth, listen to me. I promise, I promise I will not have let her die in vain. I will be here for you whenever you need me, you understand? Day, night. It doesn't matter. I lost my wife today. And I cannot bare to lose you as well."

Elizabeth hardly understood half of what her father was saying or why, but she just nodded against her father's chest, half listening to his heartbeat.

"We have to stay strong, Elizabeth. Alright? Your mother would have wanted us to be strong during such a hard time. Okay?" He said kindly, tipping the small girl's chin up. "You and I will get through this, Elizabeth, won't we?"

"Yes daddy," She promised quietly, "For mummy."

Weatherby kissed his daughter's forehead softly, "You're going to need your rest." He sat up, tucking her back into bed gently though quite haphazardly as he had never tucked her in before, "We can say our - our belated goodbyes to your mother tomorrow." She nodded slowly. With one last kiss he left her room, heading downstairs to make the arrangements for the funeral.

Elizabeth tried to settle down in her blankets, but could not get comfortable. And no matter how tightly she closed her eyes, sleep did not come to her. Not only was she kept awake with fear and sorrow over losing her mother, but the wind kept persistently rattling her window. The window panes just kept bang bang BANGING...

She jolted awake in the middle of her bed, the air tranquil as could be. A dream. A memory of a time long ago. She caught her breath, trying to calm herself down. She had hoped to never recall the unpleasant memory of her mother's death, but it would seem that a decade was her limit for blocking out troublesome memories. Tomorrow morning would be the anniversary of the accident and it would go utterly unmentioned between her and her father. It was the only time of the year they ate their meals together but did not speak. It was too grave to talk about.

Instead, Elizabeth knew she would be going down to visit the blacksmith's apprentice to cheer herself up. He often was the only thing that could brighten a dull day. This might be the last time she was young enough to sneak away unnoticed by her father to visit her old friend, William. She hadn't been caught yet. The master blacksmith never uttered a word for some reason, although that could have been because he was usually drunk to the point of sickness, and, according to Will, had been that way as long as he'd known him.

Elizabeth shook her head a bit, shutting her brown eyes again, urging her mind to let her sleep again so that tomorrow could come sooner. The sooner it came, the sooner it would leave. Just as she was drifting off a breeze lofted through her open window and stirred her light brown hair across her face. For some unknown reason this comforted her as she fell asleep once again.

* * *

 _A/N: Please note that this fic is technically an AU in which Elizabeth is born and raised in Port Royale rather than crossing from England. I hadn't really remembered this detail while writing, so I did mess with the canon a bit. I still felt this story was worth sharing despite this. Thank you for reading!_


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